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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Here I see few iso file links and some tar.bz2 extention. Kindly guide me that which one I chhose to download or there is a need to download all files in a specific way and then make an iso file ? It is a new thing for me please guide me.

2-If you sent me a link from where i download the iso file then it will be easy for me to burn the cd/dvd.

Here I see few iso file links and some tar.bz2 extention. Kindly guide me that which one I chhose to download or there is a need to download all files in a specific way and then make an iso file ? It is a new thing for me please guide me.

2-If you sent me a link from where i download the iso file then it will be easy for me to burn the cd/dvd.

You've been registered here for NINE years...from your other threads, you've installed Slackware and Debian, but now need help downloading a file??? And you need us to spoon-feed you a link? Here's some easy steps:

Go to the Gentoo site

Click Download

You'll see a list of processor types...next to each is a link that says "ISO".

Click whichever link matches your processor type

Then, look at that screen...it'll have a file named <something>.ISO. Amazingly, the file named ISO is the ISO file.

You'll typically want to use the install-<arch>-minimal iso. You don't technically have to though; I've found it's a lot easier to PXE boot a live Debian terminal and install Gentoo from that.
The Gentoo handbook that TobiSGD does a very good job of explaining the install procedure.

First. Your hardware seems rather weak for compiling. Expect long (I mean long, long) compiling times.
Second. Nothing from the install media will become a part of your installation. Feel free to use any Linux liveCD you already have or get one of popular rescue distros for installation, like SystemRescueCd, GRML or Knoppix. Generally these distros have much better hardware support than Gentoo install CD.

I remember those days when i maintained Gentoo on a 1.3 GHz machine, desperately using a second (1 GHz) box with distcc to reduce these compile times...

Expect a package like glibc to take at least 6-8 hours to compile on a 1 GHz machine. Yes, just that one package. Likewise with gcc, the kernel, firefox, thunderbird, QT/KDE stuff and a couple more, although most other packages are rather small and won't take very long. But then, there are hundreds of packages..

On a really fast machine, glibc builds in 15 minutes (or even less), which is where the real fun with Gentoo starts. But all the love for Gentoo won't get me again to install it on a machine which is that old. No problem with any other distro (1 GHz / 512 MB is still just fine), but a source-based one won't be much fun in the long run.

I still see no reason to replace my aging laptop, IBM T23 (it does everything I need it for). Runs Gentoo - the only 32-bit OS in my household, when upgrading I force lower CPU frequency (don't want to give hard time to this veteran) and run distcc in pump mode. Compile times are reasonable.

Optimization pipe flags? Has nothing to do with option -pipe btw (which can always be used to save write times). But yes, you could use -O1 or -O0 to speed up compiling, and -g0 to avoid debug infos being created in the first place when it's stripped afterwards anyhow. But still, Gentoo isn't much fun on an old solo machine if you're not having a second (faster) box to help out via distcc. Just that one machine might be fun for a couple of days but in the long run it gets annoying..

I thought -Os was supposed to be optimized for size as well, which on an older system *should* translate to some boost in speed, right? Probably not a remarkable increase, but a noticable one.
Or am I mistaken?

-Os does what it says, it creates a small executable, for low-memory settings, i.e., embedded stuff and the like, while -O1 might already implement optimizations which don't produce the smallest code but might well be faster than code generated with -Os. Although you'll probably very rarely ever note any difference except maybe one or two things like some video codec or stuff like that, but only if you really use a stopwatch to measure.

What any of those so-called optimization level does depends on many things, particularly the architecture. The difference between -O1 and -Os can be negligible in some settings, and very important in some others. The recommended setting is -O2, unless you-know-what-you're-doing (TM), and then you wouldn't be asking this at all.

First. Your hardware seems rather weak for compiling. Expect long (I mean long, long) compiling times.
Second. Nothing from the install media will become a part of your installation. Feel free to use any Linux liveCD you already have or get one of popular rescue distros for installation, like SystemRescueCd, GRML or Knoppix. Generally these distros have much better hardware support than Gentoo install CD.

It can be done. I've installed gentoo on a 750MHz with 256MB of ram. Compilation was very slow and a good amount of swap space is required for compiling, but it works.